The Empire’s prosperity could be seen from the ancient, majestic structures of the city. It was no wonder that the humans could finally stand up from enslavement, defeated the descendants of the dark, and created a new world from the edge of life and death.

For the past thousand years of its existence, numerous heroes had appeared one after the other, and one by one, they tore up the black enslavement shadows that surrounded human beings like the star road in the dark night, and finally, developed a new living world.

The Sovereign of the twenty-third Empire had a heroic saying, “If our world has no sunshine, then we’ll make our own sun!” He was by far the only powerful human who had gone deep into the highest upper mainland of the Dark Races. Although in the end, he had disappeared along with the XuGu star that had fallen.

Nowadays, the empire mainland had settled in four continents, gradually became more powerful, wealthier, and so did talented people.

In the court, the Imperial Double Jade Zhang BoQian and Lin XiTang together control the overall situation. In the army, eight marshals separately guarded the eight major directions of the Empire’s territory. As the eight strongest master from ten noble most powerful families, their powers were like the ‘needle the subside the sea’ [1]. Each man was a God-like existence against the Dark Races!

It was midnight at the moment; the entrance gateway of this ancient city was crowded. The wind passing by brought with it a cool humidity, chased away the wilderness’s rotten air and was replaced with a wealthy, fresh aura of prosperity.

Qian Ye felt as if something was dancing inside his chest. It wasn’t the anxious feeling of hunger and thirst for fresh blood, the exciting feeling of the expectations of future and hope which had been missing for a long time inside his heart.

Now standing in front of his eyes and occupying his entire vision was the legendary Eternal Gateway!

Unless facing a big battle with the Darkness, this gate would never close. As long as people had one silver coin each to pay for the tax fee, they could freely enter the city. Even if the guards knew that it was a Dark creature under camouflage, they would still be allowed to pass the gate as long as the tax was paid. As for later on who would kill or be killed, it would be decided behind the entrance.

This domineering tradition came from one of its brave soldiers, Peng Huai Yuan.

At its seven-hundredth year of establishment, the Dark Blood city was attacked by a union formed by the Devil Descendants and Werewolves, all head commanders of the city’s army had advocated to close the door, but Peng Huai Yuan heavily slapped on the meeting table and shouted, “I, Peng Huai Yan will let the door open, let’s see who dares to come and fight with me!”

Peng Huai Yuan had kept his words and opened the door. He had led three hundred soldiers and irrupted straight into the enemy’s base like a storm, and by his own hand he had beheaded the coalition army’s chief, and took down their honor flag! Two hundred thousand dark warriors were defeated and had to retreat for thousands of miles away from the city.

After this war, Peng Huai Yuan had gotten seriously injured and died seven days later in the city mansion. The empire had lost a great commander.

At that time, when the sovereign of the Empire heard of the news, he had written a panel and passed it down, “Dear my utterly fearless heroes, follow general Peng’s path!”

Since then, Peng Huai Yuan’s name had spread throughout the world and became a legend.

There was not a single soldier that didn’t know about Peng Huai Yuan. Therefore, Qian Ye was very familiar with folktales of his manners. Peng Huai Yuan’s strength was not the strongest in the military. However, this war, although ten million Dark warriors were still admiring of his bravery.

The Dark Blood city had rarely closed its gate. Even the Dark creature’s armies were helpless in facing this enormous wall. In the past, it had been collapsed three times, but then it would soon recovered by the Empire. Every time there were big counterattacks, not only the Imperial Expeditionary Force were sent to help, but those who were wild horse-like hunters, soloists, adventurers, and even the ghost-like rebels would join their forces.

Since the first moment he had studied about the Eternal Gateway in the Red Scorpion history class, Qian Ye had wished for an opportunity to come and look at it with his bare eyes. It was said that every block from the city wall was engraved with countless names. They were names of heroes who had sacrificed their soul for this city’s prosperity for nearly a thousand years until the recent. At the time, he did not think that he would use the identity of a dark blood polluted refugee to stand at this place.

However, the shadow of death was fading away. Qian Ye had no longer felt thirsty or hungry for blood since he killed Tiger Yan and Qi Yue. The blurry faint light after the garbage dump battle had gradually grown into a shiny sunlight of Dawn. Qian Ye’s heart, the heart that belonged to a young fearless soldier, which was strengthened after that bloody night, was gradually revived and began to slowly rise. And once again, it was completely ignited the moment he saw the dark transaction between Qi Yue and those vampires.

So he gave up the idea of ??trying to find a quiet life in a remote town. He had lost everything once, including the ‘Lin’ surname that he had always been proud of, and also the desperate last mission of the Red Scorpion captain. Now that he found a chance to live once again, it was impossible to not give out his best try for a shot!

In this city where legends and realities came into common, the city where chaos and evils are dominant, the most valuable thing was freedom and opportunity.

There were no defined social orders in this place, but there were no nobles either. Here, the supremacy was power, and it was also an alternative fair. In the Dark Blood city, so long as a person had talent, effort, and a little luck, it was possible for him to discover his own new world.

Perhaps at the moment, Qian Ye did not know very clear how to drag out that big hand behind the dark at the far away upper mainland, but he knew the first step he should do was to go back to that world, to the crowd who had once let him be feared and admired.

Qian Ye made a casual clean up, disguised into a regular scavenger, blended in with the flow of people and entered the Dark Blood city. When he casted a silver coin into the gateway’s tax box, he was worried that it could cause unusual attention if a scavenger had that much property. However, the result was found astonishing. The guards were too lazy to even take a glance at him, their face showed the carefree expression of “we all knew you had disguised yourself, brat”.

At the meantime, a group of beggars behind Qian Ye came over; each of them tossed one silver coin into the tax box and flocked to enter. For the first time in his life, Qian Ye was stunned to have his jaw dropped to his chest.

In the Lighthouse town, beggars were all they were, they didn’t even have a few copper coins in their hands, whereas the beggars here were even glittering some golden lights in their pockets.

It seemed that there were variety of people who had disguised themselves that way to go out of the city and do their ‘job’, no wonder the guards were not surprised.

Qian Ye went into the Dark Blood city and stayed at a small hotel in the South Street after he had gathered enough information.

This was a very convenient location. The neighborhood was littered with many bars, mercenary guilds, and two large gang groups gathered. Then, two blocks further down to the city central was the famous Black Copper Street where weapons and related equipment were traded.

After a long time studying the city map, Qian Ye decided to handle the black goods on the first hand.

The Hornet was Qi Yue’s personal gun, it was better not to stay with him any longer. The Dawn Light and that level one force rifle were all too bad in regards to quality, so Ye had no interests in keeping them. The Liquefied Golden Rose was really a good thing, but it was too luxurious and it was more suitable to have sold it for money or jewelry. If he scratched off the patterns on it’s body, then the value of the gun would immediately be reduced to one-third of the original price. It would have been a meaningless waste.

As for the black crystal, it was impossible to sell or trade it, and they were the most troublesome things. Theoretically, black trade goods would not leave any marks to be tracked, but the problem was that there were not many manufactures who could have created this high-quality black crystal in the entire Empire. Qian Ye did not know a lot about it didn’t mean that the sellers didn’t realize it, he was afraid it would alert the people behind the scenes.

Before going out, Qian Ye decided to change his appearance. In this complex tiny world with it’s vast populations, changing a little facial details from time to time was a very practical tip. A small adjustment like eyebrows, eye color, adding a beard or changing one’s hairstyle would make a great change on a person’s overall appearance.

Qian Ye took out the make-up tools and stood in front of the mirror, and carefully began to adjust his face. First of all, he played with his eyebrows and eyes. He felt that his eyebrows seemed not to be thick enough. Therefore, he carefully drew a few lines on it and his whole face had changed in just a moment.

Now his fixed eyebrows looked like a sword as his entire face became more manly, but… beautiful.

Qian Ye was very dissatisfied. Therefore he washed away the eyebrows drawing and then re-drew a few lines. The lines this time made his face looked even more elegant, and the overall look was quite charming, or it could be defined as very… beautiful.

After a few more tries, Qian Ye’s face turned black (-_-!!!)

He found a very unpleasant truth. It was not going to be a big problem if he changed the entire face structure, but if only relied on re-modified facial details to influence other people’s visual judgments. It would turn out to be extremely awkward. The other way to say it was after achieving the womanly effect after make-up, he would turn… beautiful, and the most awkward thing was that he would turn into a kind of asexual beauty.

Perhaps most women would dream of this effect, but Qian Ye felt the total opposite. He angrily punched the mirror, shattering it, and murmured to himself, “D*** it! How could it be?” He almost wanted to go back to the camouflage class.

The Qian Ye’s had really changed a lot compared to when he had just entered the Lighthouse town. His original appearance was handsome, and with the military manner inherited in the Tiger Scorpion, he could be considered as being of a masculine handsomeness. However, after having the Black Blood infected him, although he had become physically tougher and more flexible, his body seemed even thinner and even more fragile.

When he first arrived at the Lighthouse town, he had gotten into some harassment problems with this pretty face, and only after he taught those blind guys did he find some peace. However, he had never thought that one day his face would become so beautiful just after a little touch up!

Now, even if the former Red Scorpion colleagues were standing in front of him, not many people would have recognized Qian Ye.

“Well, that’s fine. At least people won’t recognize me. F*** it! Not a big deal, I’ll be a woman then!” Qian Ye thought and tried to self-comfort himself, tried on the fake wig, decided not to be lazy and went for the full set disguise.

Meanwhile, Yu Ren Yan and several Dark Blade fighters also showed up at the Dark Blood gateway. If there was no need to track down the smell, the experts would certainly not torture him any longer. He took his companions along with muzzles and gold coins and hitchhiked. The distance between him and Qian Ye was shortened to two hours.

Yu Ren Yan was wearing a simple cape which adventurers usually wore and only exposed his two eyes.

He looked at the bustling crowd on the streets, suddenly sneered and mercilessly said, “No matter what you become, I can still catch you. I never look at anyone’s face to find them!”

Yu Ren Yan waved his hand in the air and the Dark Blade soldiers who had embodied to be ordinary hunters and adventurers immediately scattered to every corner of the city, latent down, and waited for call. On the other hand, Yu Ren Yan calmly walked to the central city to look for a place to stay.

This prey was abnormally cunning. Yu Ren Yan had done a long deal preparation. He could not miss such a fun game with such a strong opponent. Between the hunter and prey, the decisive win didn’t depend on strength, but patience.

Yu Ren Yan having chosen the Dark Blood city was purely out of intuition. Although at last it was not very different from losing the trace altogether, but he had made a guess that the other side’s destination was this city. Moreover, the ride he had taken also delivered goods to this city. All had made him feel like it was destiny that was guiding him on his path.

Qian Ye walked out of the small hotel. He didn’t know that those gruesome hunters were so close behind him.

At the moment he was wearing a standard adventurer’s attire as his face was added with a layer of a thick short beard, the beard’s tip was dyed brown. Carrying a backpack on his shoulder, he leisurely walked into the mysterious Black Copper Street, and slowly looked at the stores around, one by one.

[1] needle subsides the sea: a term derived from the novel “Journey to the West”. It was a weapon which could change its side as the owner want it to, from small like a needle to a giant stick which could subside the sea.